


Stars Rain Sun Moon

by Aliset



Series: A Universe Next Door [3]
Category: Captain America (All media types), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Hipster Grandpas, Bucky Barnes: Goat Herder, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fluff, Graphic Depictions of Accidental Hipsterism, M/M, More cheese than a New York pizza, Not Black Panther (Marvel) compliant, Not Infinity War (Marvel) compliant, Not really canon compliant since TWS, SO MUCH FLUFF, Steve Rogers: Goat Whisperer, There is no plot here only fluff, Wakandan cats are judging you boys, canon-divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 09:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14912879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliset/pseuds/Aliset
Summary: A fluffy slice of life set a few years after the end of "The Ability to Stop."





	Stars Rain Sun Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Escapologist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escapologist/gifts).



Stars Rain Sun Moon

by Aliset

A/N- This story is for the incredible Escapologist, who continues to be an excellent midwife to “The Ability to Stop.” Mwuah! Happy (belated) birthday, hon! :)

Thanks to Sweethoneysempai for the beta, and Girlbookwrm for the encouragement! ☺

 

\--//--

 

Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Stevie,” Bucky murmured against the other man’s shoulder. “Your turn.”

“For what?” 

“The windows.” They’d been left wide open, in deference to the summer heat and the fact that neither of them was particularly fond of air conditioning. Heat, muggy heat, they could withstand, even enjoy---but the cold? No. 

Steve muttered something against his pillows and rolled to his back. The muted silver of the moon through the clouds highlighted his long hair. “I set the weather screens before we went to bed.”

Bucky frankly gaped at him. “When did you… I mean, I thought you were a little busy there!”

There was a twist of a grin on Steve’s face--- _Steve Rogers, Little Shit,_ Bucky privately called that grin. “I can multi-task, Buck. Besides, it was one button---you remember, Shuri showed us the setting?”

She had been there only the week before, anxious to install the updates to the weather screens that also doubled as their home security. Not that they really had much to fear in Wakanda; between Bucky’s work as Shuri’s lab assistant and occasional security consultant, and their friendship with the king, they were as well-protected as they could be. But because neither Bucky nor Steve were inclined to take foolish chances---not anymore, not in their new life together---they had home security. 

“And Stella’s in for the night too,” Steve went on. 

Stella was their house cat---though like every other cat in Wakanda, she wasn’t content to hang around their house all day. In a country where cats of all varieties were sacred, she simply came to them every day and deigned to keep them company when and where she chose. “Oh, good,” Bucky said, “I know she doesn’t like the rain.”

Steve’s huff of laughter was one of the things that hadn’t changed from their childhood together. “Name me a cat that does, Buck. She hopped right up in your chair when I let her in and is now sleeping.” Steve stretched out, his head resting on one bent arm. “Tell me why you’re not asleep.”

Bucky shrugged. “Thunder woke me up. Sounds like a hell of a storm out there.”

“And that’s it?”

They were both prone to nightmares, bad ones, but a lot of therapy had gone a long way to reducing the frequency of them. Steve saw Viwe about once or twice a week and Bucky had his sessions with Dr. Methuli. Bucky shrugged. “Nah, not this time,” he said lightly. The covers were warm and full of Steve-scent---that familiar combination of linseed oil, sweat, and the light spice of the Wakandan soap Steve bought from the market. “What do we have planned today?”

“Nothing. Sam’s wife got called into the hospital, and Esihle is having a rough time teething, so we’re rescheduling dinner with them, and I don’t have to be at the art studio until tomorrow. Clint and Laura and the kids aren’t coming over until next weekend, Nat is working at an undisclosed location and Wanda is out of the country with Samkelo right now. What about you? Aren’t you working with Shuri today?”

“Nah. Shuri is taking the day off since Peter is in town.”

Steve quirked an eyebrow. “You think there’s something there?”

Bucky laughed. “Pal, I _know_ there’s something there. They’ve only been dancing around it since they were sixteen. I hear there’s quite the lively betting pool among the Dora Milaje.”

“How much did you bet?”

“Oh, you wound me!” Bucky retorted in mock innocence. “Twenty dollars and a stint sparring with Okoye if I lose.”

Steve grinned. “You’d best be sure about that one, pal. Okoye won’t hold back.”

Bucky waggled his eyebrows. “I’m counting on it.”

“You have a type,” Steve mock- accused. “Feisty women who look as if they could run you through.”

“Hey,” Bucky said, laughing, “Peggy didn’t shoot _me_ , you jerk. That was you.”

Steve smiled, the fond smile that was Peggy’s and Peggy’s alone. Bucky had recovered much of his memories, thanks to Shuri’s genius, but some were simply gone forever. Peggy, though…she was never far from either of them. “She was some dame, Steve,” he said, leaning back against a broad shoulder, the other man’s heartbeat a distant rhythmic echo under his ear. 

“That she was,” Steve answered. “I think she’d have been happy for us. Right after she yelled at us for taking so long.”

Bucky laughed, because wasn’t that Peggy, through and through? Endlessly pragmatic and brave, she’d guessed something of their relationship decades before either of them had dared pursue it. It would have made her thrilled to know she was right, in the end. 

The thought led to others, not entirely unwelcome. They had been other people back then---too rightfully scared to name the thing between them, too terrified of what the neighbors, then the Army, might do. But in this future? They lived together quite openly in the house they’d rebuilt, and loved openly too. And four months before, they’d declared themselves wed in the simplest of Wakandan traditions---by gathering three witnesses under the full moon and announcing their intentions. 

T’Challa had married a month before and had laughingly explained that a king could not wed in nearly the same fashion---indeed, the celebrations were still going on in parts of Birin Zana---but that he rather found the simplicity of the old ceremony to be best. Bucky had almost not wanted to get married---what need did they have for an actual wedding when they’d more or less been wed since 1935?---but Steve had turned unexpectedly pragmatic in this new century. “Buck,” he’d said, “here in Wakanda, it’s one thing, but you heard what Nat said yesterday.”

Bucky had nodded. Nat, who had landed here too eventually, was working as an intelligence analyst alongside the new queen. A return to a saner, more stable government in the United States had prompted an in-depth review of the Sokovian Accords, and it hadn’t taken long for public support to swing against the Accords (at least, in their current state) and for pardoning all of the ex-Avengers. If that went through, they might be able to visit, one day---but Steve didn’t want assurances from a government he had no reason to trust. He wanted the law on his side, and any amount of legal protection they could get. And so, they’d picked a night when the full moon shone brightest (gleefully calculated by Shuri) and made it official.

Bucky had never been much of a romantic—at least, he didn’t think he’d ever been known for that, but being married? He liked that just fine. And God, he loved his man. “So what you’re telling me is, we have… the entire day together? Nothing else to do?”

“Seems that way,” Steve agreed and there it was, the Brooklyn mick accent they’d grown up with. It only came out around Bucky, and he loved it. “Got plans, pal?”

His hand crept lower. “Got…big plans. You?”

Steve’s breath was hot at his shoulder. “I could do this all day.”

Bucky laughed. And wasn’t that just him---more cheese than Brooklyn pizza, but god, Bucky loved this man.

***

The next time, it was Steve’s turn to wake. Just past dawn, when the air was still cool and still for an hour or so, until the sun rose higher in the sky. He would normally have gotten out of bed, dressed, tied his hair back and gone for a run, but today? Eh. Today he didn’t feel like it. Today he wanted to make some coffee, maybe get some bread from the bakery, and find out what spending the day in bed with his lover was actually like.

In Wakanda, they led lives altogether different from what they might have led, even had they both made it home from the war. Bucky had resumed and finished the engineering degree interrupted by World War II and all that had come after, and although he frankly admitted he’d never be as sharp as Shuri, he was one of her favorite assistants. “Not too bad for a guy who used to work the docks, eh?” Bucky had said one night, high on ideas and designs that were still Greek to Steve’s ears. It was enough that Bucky understood, understood and enjoyed them. 

“Always knew you were meant for better things, Barnes,” Steve had drawled, simply and utterly happy for him.

Bucky had grinned his old wry grin—a twist of the lips Steve had once thought he’d never see again. “Hi, Better Things.”

It was a line that could have come from Bucky Barnes, circa 1940 (and probably had,) and Steve had laughed in a way he’d forgotten he could. Now, with the prospect of an entire day together and no other plans, Steve felt somehow young again. 

“Thinkin’ loud, Rogers,” Bucky muttered, the words softened by his pillow. 

It was eerie how he did that, how much he _knew_. Steve hadn’t moved from their bed, hadn’t even pushed back the covers, but Bucky had known he was awake. “You need to feed the goats,” Bucky went on and Steve repressed a groan. Of course. The goats, even the female goat who somehow saw him as competition for Bucky’s attentions and kept trying to chew on his pants or his shoes. And who tried to escape enough times that Steve suspected her of being part velociraptor.

“The goats. Yeah, okay pal, I’ll handle the goats, even the she-beast. Then what do you want?” Steve asked. 

Bucky opened one storm-grey eye. “World peace, maybe? No? Then how about bagels.”

Steve rose and pulled his pants on---ones he didn’t much care if the goat nibbled on, since the cuffs were already frayed and torn. “Okay, bagels. From that place Wanda told us about?”

Wanda had been delighted to discover, a few years before, that there was a small, but thriving, Jewish community in Birin Zana, descendants of lost traders who had stumbled on Wakanda in the 15th century. The rabbi of her congregation ran a bakery on the outskirts of their village, and although the bagels tasted slightly different (something in the water, Shuri had speculated, and Steve supposed she’d know) they were still the closest thing either Bucky or Steve had tasted to a good New York City bagel.

“Nah, punk,” Bucky muttered. “The other bagel shop in Wakanda. Of course that one.”

“I don’t think they have lox though,” Steve said. “Cream cheese okay?”

“Heathens,” Bucky replied without heat. “Sure. Cream cheese. And half a dozen bialys, if they have them.”

Steve pulled on a t-shirt that was probably Bucky’s---it was looser than his own, anyway--- and tied his hair back. “Anything else?” he asked. 

“Get a hat,” Bucky told him. “Remember Dr. Nomsa’s speech about sunburn.”

He did indeed—she’d delivered it twice since they’d come to Wakanda, the last one the summer before, when he’d gotten a sunburn that not even the serum knew what to do with. It hadn’t lasted long, not compared to his sunburns before the serum, but it had been a rough few days and not ones Steve was eager to repeat. He grabbed the hat off the nightstand—probably Bucky’s, since he wore one more often to protect his eyes from the bright Wakandan sun after decades in a dark cryo chamber---and headed out. 

The goats got taken care of first---the she-beast, a black goat who glared at him every time he came near, got fed and her water changed out. She was pregnant and likely to give birth in a month or so, which was making her more cranky than usual. The other two goats were much friendlier and butted up against his hands after he fed them. Once they were fed, he set them loose on the back acreage; he had plans to expand their kitchen garden, and the goats would clear off the weeds. He activated one of the beads on his bracelet and sent a message to an older couple that lived downriver to let them know the goats would be ready to help them clear their fields later that day. “I’m leaving,” he said to the goats, “but Bucky will be back later on.”

Then he laughed at himself--- _Steve Rogers, goat whisperer_ \---something that was also new, because his life had been so very serious for so very long. Here in Wakanda, in the last place on earth he should ever have expected to be, he was… becoming someone different, someone who talked to goats and fetched bagels and stood barefoot on a Wakandan road and watched the sun rise higher into the cloudless summer sky.

***

Bucky awakened reluctantly at the smell of fresh bagels and a warm Steve sliding into bed next to him. “Breakfast in bed okay?” he asked. 

“Depends,” Bucky said, groggy. “Is there coffee?”

“Here you go,” Steve replied, and handed mug to him. “It’s the new blend from the bakery and they want you to let them know how it is.”

Bucky took a sip, and then another. “Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“When did we become hipsters?”

Steve laughed. “You’re just now noticing? We live on a farm, raising free range goats, and you’re drinking coffee specially made by a collective here in Wakanda. I’m an artist and you have a thing for gadgets.”

“I,” Bucky said lightly, “am an engineer, I’ll have you know.”

“Buck. When _weren’t_ we hipsters?”

That tore it---Bucky began to laugh, because the sudden image of them as they had been was…well, hipsters these days would have been envious, except for the constant grinding poverty, he supposed. “Hey, you know what I miss sometimes?”

Steve put some cream cheese on a bagel and handed it to Bucky. “What?”

“You in your suspenders and that oversized shirt of mine.”

Steve blushed slightly. “Um, I might have something of the sort in my closet.” At Bucky’s look, his flush deepened. “What? They’re comfortable.”

Bucky laughed. “Oh my God, you’re right. We _are_ hipsters.”

***

After breakfast, Stella came ambling into their bedroom. She was taller and thinner than the cats Steve remembered feeding in Brooklyn, descended from some wilder breed that had somehow decided humans were acceptable company. Stella was all black, with green eyes, and she resembled nothing so much as a miniature panther. Shuri had been delighted. “Cats like this, they are good luck here,” she’d said in her musical Wakandan accent. “However did you find her?”

Bucky had shrugged. “I think she found us. I came home, and she was sound asleep in my chair. Thought Steve had brought her in, but he hadn’t.”

Good luck or no, Stella had her priorities firmly in place: Bucky, then food. Then the rodents and insects that pestered their garden (and which she occasionally presented to them.) And lastly, Steve. Or Steve’s paintbrushes, whichever was closest. Now, Stella was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking impatient. “Buck didn’t feed you yet?” Steve asked, grinning. 

Stella meowed. “Okay,” Steve went on, “I guess that’s a no. Buck’s outside, taking care of the she-beast, so I’ll feed you.”

Stella blinked slowly, apparently signaling her agreement, and Steve followed the cat into their kitchen. Shuri, who’d appointed herself their cultural translator back when T’Challa had granted the lot of them citizenship, had explained that there wasn’t a pet food industry as such in Wakanda, but there were recipes traded on the country’s intranet for homemade pet food. Steve, who did a fair percentage of the cooking, made Stella’s food, which---being that she was a cat---she didn’t always seem to appreciate. But she never left the bowl full, regardless.

He pulled out a thawed container for her and Stella wound herself between his legs before deigning to eat. As the cat settled down for her breakfast, Steve glanced at the coffee pot and saw it was almost empty. He put another pot on to brew then absently checked their email with one of the kimoyo beads on his bracelet. Over the years they’d spent in Wakanda, Steve had come to appreciate their relationship with technology. While it was everywhere, it was designed to be unobtrusive in the home and other living spaces. So he could check the email, but when he was done, banish them and their electronic presence without a hint of cables or wires. 

There was a touch of lips at his neck. “Anything interesting?” Bucky asked. 

Steve leaned back slightly and felt the vibranium arm encircle his waist, the wall of solid muscle behind him. “Something from Pepper, a new photo of Benjamin.” He skimmed the rest of her email. “She wants us to meet him.”

Bucky looked at the photo over his shoulder. “Kid’s gotten big. What is he now, five?”

“Almost six,” Steve said. His enduring friendship with Pepper Potts had been one of the most unexpected things to come out of the Avengers, surviving even the aftermath of the Accords.

“Seems like he’d be a good kid, with his ma being Pepper. She planning to come out here?”

“Next Spring,” Steve said. “Benjamin is starting school and she doesn’t want to disrupt that.” He saw the next email and paused. “And Tony wants to meet for lunch next month.”

“I’ll bet he does,” Bucky muttered, and well, fair enough. Tony was a lot to handle on a good day, even without the added toxic waters under that particular bridge. “So long as he ain’t tryin’ to get us to join up with him again.”

Their “no” had been pretty consistently firm the few times Tony had asked, and Tony had appeared to back off. But Steve had more than enough experience of Tony’s obsessions to not be a bit concerned that they’d have to get more forceful if the subject came up. “If it ain’t that,” Bucky went on, “he’s probably all anxious about what Peter’s getting up to.”

“Safe money is Peter will be getting ‘up to’ Shuri, if the Dora don’t gut him first,” Steve observed dryly. Head scientist or not, genius or not, Shuri was still the king’s sister and the current heir to the throne. The Dora liked Peter, but if he hurt her, Steve wouldn’t give a nickel for his chances. 

“Faint heart never won fair maiden,” Bucky agreed. “If he can’t deal with what she already has going on in her life, best he learn that now.”

“You should write an advice column,” Steve replied. “Advice to the lovelorn, by Bucky Barnes.”

Steve could feel Bucky’s smile against his neck. “Yeah. That would go over well. ‘Dear Bucky, should I carry a gun or grenades on our first date?’ ”

“You weren’t carrying either on our first date,” Steve said lightly. “And we managed.”

“Our first date,” Bucky mused. “Steve, I…”

They’d had a hundred variations on this conversation over the years, and Steve’s response was always the same. “I’ll remember it enough for both of us, then. I was eighteen, you were nineteen, and you had that job at the docks, the first year after my mam passed. It was so hot that summer we just started sleeping on the roof. I hadn’t realized you’d come home and I went up there and you…”

“What, Stevie?” Bucky murmured against his neck. 

“You’d taken your shirt off,” Steve said. “And the moonlight was on your shoulders and in your hair and I just…knew. Like… _oh, there you are._ ” He grinned, remembering. “You brought a couple of sandwiches from the deli and some soda. No grenades, I promise.”

“Hmm,” said Bucky, mouth warm at his ear. “Coffee’s ready and nothing else needs doing, right?”

_Only you,_ Steve thought, but at the huff of Bucky’s delighted cackle, realized he must have said it out loud. “Come back to bed,” Bucky said. 

 

***

“I wish I could draw you,” Bucky said a few hours later. There was no response and he didn’t honestly expect one. Steve was sound asleep, the freckles on his back visible in the late afternoon sun. His hair was spread out against one shoulder, golden in the light. “You say I’m beautiful but I don’t know who I’d be without you.” And that was in more ways than not the literal truth. Bucky’s memories had returned about as much as they were going to, but there were gaps, and there were always going to be gaps. Steve’s presence, and his eidetic memory, had helped fill in the memories that Bucky simply couldn’t. 

He reached out to touch Steve’s hair, then stopped. He wore it longer now than he ever had before, and Bucky supposed it was a pretty obvious statement against the idea that he and Captain America were the same person. Coming to Wakanda, regardless of the reasons they’d all ended up here, had turned out better than either of them could have expected. For Steve, it had given him a chance to rediscover who he was without the shield and the expectations of a nation. For Bucky, it had given him a measure of his past, and a future he’d never have envisioned. 

Steve’s hand reached out, searching, and Bucky grasped it hard. “Bucky?” Steve asked, the high thin whine of panic entering his voice. Bucky cursed fluently in Wakandan under his breath. He knew exactly which dream this was.

“I’m here, Stevie. I’m here,” he said softly. “I’m right next to you. I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” 

Steve’s breathing evened out. “Y’r here?” he asked. 

Bucky smiled. The weight of everything they had been, the people they’d once been, was no longer nearly as heavy to carry, because their burdens were shared. “I’m here, Stevie. I’m home.”


End file.
